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Guest - Товарищ Х

For me though, not being able to shake the historical context, this is a trip back to Dondi's stint as a Korean war orphan (he somehow morphed from Italian DP). This racist warmongering in the guise of a cartoon was a lagniappe for the children of the house from the Chicago Tribune syndicate. It painted a friendly face on American imperialist aggression.

Guest - Товарищ Х

I am saying that the strip, <b>as a whole</b>, was a propaganda tool in the time of the Korean war. There were also, to my recollection (remember, I read this as a child), clear racist overtones (not the least of which was the assumption that a child orphaned by American imperialist aggression would need to be rescued by Americans from his own people).

The posted panel shows none of this. Taken out of the historical context of the strip as a whole, this panel (in particular its text) is timely enough that I linked to your posting of it on twitter.

I did however want to recall, for those who may be too young to have read the strip themselves, what I remember of the more complete context.

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Yes, "Displaced Person" (this was Dondi in his first incarnation, as an Italian child). Sorry, bad twitter habits have me lapsing into abbreviations where the meaning seems clear (even when there is no 140 character limit).

Kasama is a communist project for the forcible overthrow and transformation of all existing social conditions. We are open to learning, unafraid to admit our own uncertainties. We will not shrink from what we do know: the solutions cannot be found within the current world order or the choices it provides. We are for revolution. We seek to find the forms of organization and action for the people most dispossessed by this system to free themselves and all humanity.

To take this road, we need a fearless, open-eyed debate, discussion and engagement. We need fresh analyses of the rapid changes shaping the world around us. We need to sum up a century of revolutionary strategies and attempts, victories and defeats – instead of the conventional wisdom and facile verdicts that paralyze our movements. We need to re-imagine a radical politics that can take life among people and move mountains.